Yasuyuki Murai

Autonomous navigation of RFID-sensing robots - information ensuring for the visually impaired (2)

The construction of information ensured environment for the visually impaired (say, in the college life) combining data carrier and network technologies includes the problem of obtaining and conveying environmental information. As the visually impaired have keen difficulties in sensing changes of surroundings, in order to assist them we usually need an interface (say, a guide dog) between people and the environment. We put RFID tags on surrounding objects so that we can treat them as landmarks of the environment. Then we can design autonomous robots to sense the changes of locations of objects and situations. In this paper we describe a general navigation algorithm of such robots based on distance information obtained, say, by super sonic sensors which are equipped on the robot. Our algorithm is designed on the so-called distance field space model (DFM), which can be considered as a natural description of objects and space on the basis of a fuzzy set theory. Though major part of this paper is devoted to the development of the navigation principle based on DFM, our RFID-sensing robots are not equipped with this algorithm yet.

Use of Bar Code and RFID for the Visually Impaired in Educational Environment

Getting information from a bar code or from RFID tags attached to equipments or surroundings is a promising step for building an information ensured area for the visually impaired. For example one can obtain an operation manual (voice version) from the tag attached to some electronic equipment. The purpose of the project we report here is the construction of such information ensured environment in the college life. We present two concrete examples: getting voice access to announcement on the bulletin board by using bar code, and messaging system between students and teacher by using RFID. We show that data-carrier technologies are effective for information ensuring for the visually impaired.

Game-theoretic approach to placement problems of rectilinear blocks solution of rectilinear jigsaw puzzle

In this paper, a rectilinear jigsaw puzzle is taken up as a specialized placement problem such that it has at least one solution of placement, but not so many in general. In order to solve this problem, instead of adopting the well known iterative method, a new game-theoretic algorithm is developed by translating the problem to a checkmate problem of a game analogous to chess or shogi. It is proved by numerical experiments that this works well with good efficiency.

Rectilinear Jigsaw Puzzles: Theory and Algorithms

In previous papers, rectilinear jigsaw puzzles have been described as a specialized placement problem such that this has at least one solution to placement, but generally not that many. Instead of adopting the well-known iterative method to solve this problem, a new game-theoretic algorithm is developed by translating the problem to one of checkmate in games analogous to chess or shogi. By extending the game-theoretic algorithm, a much faster algorithm for large puzzles is developed by introducing various heuristics on the placement of pieces. We also proved through numerical experiments that this worked efficiently.

A new deterministic algorithm for two-dimensional rectangular packing problems based on polyomino packing models

The major theme of this paper is to discuss solution algorithms of the Cutting and Packing Problems, that is, problems to find optimal layout of given parts (items) on given material(object) in order to get maximal usage of the object. Especially in this paper, the authors deal with two-dimensional rectangular packing problems. Here, a new deterministic algorithm for the problems is proposed by extending the solution algorithms of so called polyomino packing problems, which was developed by authors. This algorithm is fully deterministic, and is not depending on the heuristic approaches nor meta-heuristic ones as the conventional algorithms were. In this paper, the superiority of the new algorithm over the conventional ones is verified by testing on benchmark data.

Design and Use of Pseudo-electronic Whiteboard for Low-Vision Education

We have built a pseudo-electronic whiteboard system (prototype) for low-vision education incorporating a commercial capturing system which mimic drawing on a plain whiteboard onto a monitor window (server-window). Moreover the capturing is such that the server window turns into a “super” pseudo-electronic whiteboard (projecting the captured whiteboard onto the whiteboard is essential). We implemented the distribution of the server-window to the class for low-vision education. We have added processing for increasing readability. Additionally the class shares separate window-area for questions and answers. The pseudo-electronic whiteboard system we made makes teacher and low-vision students share classroom education, which had been completely ignored so far.

Logic circuit diagnosis by using neural networks

This paper presents a new method of logic diagnosis for combinatorial logic circuits. First, for each type of circuit gates, an equivalent neural network gate is constructed. Then, by replacing circuit gate elements with corresponding neural network gates, an equivalent neural network circuit is constructed to the fault-free sample circuit. The testing procedure is to feed random patterns to both the neural network circuit and the fault-prone test circuit at the same time, and comparing, analyzing both outputs, the former circuit generates diagnostic data for the test circuit. Thus, the neural network circuit behaves like a diagnostic engine, and needs basically no preparation of special test patterns nor fault dictionary before diagnosing.